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The CiRCE Institute is a 501c3 called to provide Classical Education resources and training for the school and for the home.
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Cultivation of Wisdom & Virtue
CiRCE is a not-for-profit. That is by design. We are pleased to remain conscious of our dependence on God and His people. Help us to continue leavening the classical renewal by supporting us today!
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$54,872.00 Raisedof $100,000.00
A message from Andrew Kern, President of The CiRCE Institute
I arrived at the office this morning shortly after the sunrise of an autumn day. The sun was muted by misty clouds, but it gave enough light to illuminate the upper branches with their red oranges.
If you had been with me yesterday, you could have seen the early morning light shining directly on those highest branches. It was lovely too, contrasting the fiery orange against the shadowed branches lower down, which grew from the even more shadowed trunks, which in turn were rooted in the leaf-covered soil from which the tree grew.
I breathed it in and entered through the garage with a heart full of gratitude. I simply don’t deserve to work in such a lovely log cabin in such a lovely wood. And I certainly don’t deserve your seemingly endless kindness.
It’s easy to overlook the earthiness of what we do at CiRCE. We have big plans about fruit-bearing: about training teachers and transforming schools. We love to think about heavenly things like temples and glories and the light of the sun that triggers the branches to reach for heaven.
But we can’t even think about those things unless our roots are in the ground. Unless, like this month, eight of us can meet in one room for a full week to collaborate. Unless we can sit together at a very wooden table, write with pens on real index cards, type on laptops, and read books under electric lights.
There’s nothing esoteric about the way we work. Nor should there be!
CiRCE is ruled by four ideas that summarize everything we are trying to do:
- The Moment
- The Pattern
- The Training
- The Transformation
“The Moment” refers to the moment of illumination that John identifies in John 1:8. The other three ideas refer to the temple pattern (Hebrews 8:5), the training of the senses, which is the mark of maturity (Hebrews 5:14), and the transformation that comes from not conforming to the world (Romans 12:1,2).
I want to direct your attention to the word “illumination” for a moment. At CiRCE, our defining task is to support and multiply the moments of illumination that students experience when they are well taught. Everything we do, from mentoring teachers, to developing curriculum resources, to research, to everything—we do it so that students will experience these moments of illumination.
What we believe looks something like this:
“The Moment” refers to the moment of illumination that John identifies in John 1:8. The other three ideas refer to the temple pattern (Hebrews 8:5), the training of the senses, which is the mark of maturity (Hebrews 5:14), and the transformation that comes from not conforming to the world (Romans 12:1,2).
I want to direct your attention to the word “illumination” for a moment. At CiRCE, our defining task is to support and multiply the moments of illumination that students experience when they are well taught. Everything we do, from mentoring teachers, to developing curriculum resources, to research, to everything—we do it so that students will experience these moments of illumination.
What we believe looks something like this:
- We humans have souls and bodies. As a result, we can think about heavenly things like truths, principles, and ideas, but to do so we seem to need to experience them embodied—so the senses can see them.
- One Greek name for those heavenly things is logos (logoi is plural).
- Christ is The Logos – the Principle of principles or the Word of words.
- To teach is to illumine and to learn is to be illumined
- Illumination happens whenever our souls receive a logos.
- For our souls to receive a logos it needs to be made visible to the senses.
- When He took on human nature, Christ revealed the pattern of all learning: incarnate the logos.
- Christ The Logos (the first principle) illumines. John said so in John 1. Our Lord said so as well when He said, “One is your teacher, even the Christ.”
- Every lesson is a sort of parable. No matter what specific content it teaches, if the idea enters the soul, it does so because it was embodied and received. A logos was incarnated. A parable has been told and heard.
This is the theology behind mimetic teaching, which, no surprise, corresponds perfectly to human psychology. This is how our creator designed us.
Learning this way, through incarnation of a logos, is true learning. It is illumination, which is why we use metaphors like light bulbs and eyes lighting up to describe it. Illumination is the joy of learning, and therefore arouses a love of learning. Anything else is artificial.
In a parallel way, our small “L” logos at CiRCE is invisible unless we embody it. The idea of who we are is nothing if we don’t put it into action and artifacts.
We want CiRCE to be a living parable, bearing witness to Christ the Logos by being the logos that He speaks when He says our name. We can be that if and when we plant in the soil of this world the eternal truths He has entrusted to us.
That might have seemed like a long, abstract, roundabout, theological, or philosophical discussion. Sorry about that. It was meant to be an expression of worship and the beginning of an annual update. Because it’s the heart of who we are and what we are trying to do.
The Logos incarnate, the Christmas story, is the world-transforming pattern that we yearn to imitate.
I said that it can be easy to overlook the materiality of what we do at CiRCE. It can be even easier to overlook the materiality of what our Lord has done for us. As we work in an office, so He worked in a carpenter’s shop. As we travel to teach, so He had no place to lay His head. May we be a parable of His incarnate love!
Most of you know that you are CiRCE, and your prayers and financial support are the spiritual and incarnate means by which we are able to serve and through which any value we have enters the world through us.
This is why I can report to you now with boldness and joy about our needs at the end of the year and into the new year.
Jumping into the Gap.
From our beginning, we have sensed that there is a large chasm between the Christian classical tradition and the way conventional schools organize themselves: age-segregated classrooms, subject-fragmented curricula, bureaucratic governance structures, and mechanistic modes of assessment.
Knowing that breakthroughs don’t happen when you imitate conventions, we have leapt into this gap. Instead of doing things the way things are done, we’ve explored our tradition to find alternatives: different ways to teach, to order the students’ curriculum, and even to the way we structure our schools.
For over 25 years, CiRCE has been regarded as one of the leading lights in the Christian classical renewal. As far back as 1998 we began developing curriculum guides for schools, leadership consulting, and in-house teacher development, as well as homeschool workshops.
In 2005 we launched our teacher apprenticeship, which has grown into a widely recognised model for teacher mentorship. Around the same time, we released The Lost Tools of Writing, described as a stealth teacher training program as much as a writing and rhetoric curriculum.
Today, The Apprenticeship and The Lost Tools of Writing bear witness to the power of incarnational teaching and the transformative power of Christian classical education, an education ordered to human and spiritual ends.
The Lost Tools of Writing has grown into the CiRCE Press and The Apprenticeship has spawned both a graduate apprenticeship and a corps of well-equipped consultants to lead professional development. As I write, there are eleven individual CiRCE Apprenticeships distributed around the country and hundreds of teachers and homeschoolers leavening their worlds with the things they learn.
The Apprenticeship continues to be widely recognised as the state of the art for teacher mentorship within the classical renewal. Belmont Abbey College, Templeton Honors Program, and Southeastern University grant credit towards a Master’s degree. The first CiRCE apprentices graduated from master’s programs in 2025.
When schools like St. Constantine, Thales Academy, and Kepler Education recruit teachers, they grant preferred status to graduates of the CiRCE Apprenticeship. And all over the country, dozens of graduates are effectively teaching in schools, homes, and co-ops with gratitude to their mentors.
One new apprenticeship was added in 2025, and another will be added in 2026! In addition, thousands of students are learning how to deliberate using the tools of rhetoric as practised in The Lost Tools of Writing.
The impact you have had through CiRCE is extensive. Our new books and Latin resources offer humane and effective insights and tools (Thoroughness and Charm by Mandi Gerth, On Power, Things Ruinous and Glorious by Mark Signorelli, Quis est Davus and Hodie Latine), and the launch of an extraordinary new Podcast has opened the world of the fairy tale to many new listeners (In a Certain Land by Nicholas Kotar). I could go on and on.
You have enabled all of this—and so much more.
Meanwhile, the classical movement has grown astonishingly in recent years. That rapid growth has brought challenges. These seem to be the main ones:
- Teacher preparation for the flood of new schools
- Curriculum resources that fulfill the classical approach to teaching and learning
- School governance models that offer alternatives to the failed conventional approach
- Wisdom to respond to cultural shifts, technological developments, and national events (like Covid, growing violence, political extremism, etc.)
In light of these needs and the years God has been preparing us, we believe He is leading us to three big tasks:
- Implement a new model for curriculum resources
- Grow a new model for teacher development
- Establish a new school model
To incarnate these ideas, we must attend to our single greatest cash-flow burden: a $200,000 gap between projected revenues and expenses for 2026.
Because we are a not-for-profit, the gap between revenues and expenses does not tend to shrink as we grow. Indeed, quite the opposite. As opportunities to serve grow, the need for support grows with it. There was a time when $30,000 might have covered the gap. Now, as the number of our ministries has grown, the total support needed comes closer to $300,000.
To close the gap, we have established two immediate financial goals.
- The first goal is to secure $100,000 in contributions by the end of the calendar year.
- The second is to secure an additional $100,000 by June 1.
- Our Big Picture Strategic Goal is to pay for all our operational costs through sales and fees so that gifts are directed toward strategic initiatives.
Let’s look a little more closely.
Help us meet our goals.
Goal 1: Tread Water: $100,000 by December 31, 2025
Goal 2: Swim: $100,000 in addition by June 1, 2026
Then we can walk on water!
Our first goal is simple and achievable: $100,000 in tax deductible contributions by the end of 2025
Here’s how that could play out (in fact, as you’ll see, it has already begun):
Generous benefactors of CiRCE have already pledged $35,000 in the form of matching funds! That means every dollar you contribute up to $35,000 will be matched and thus doubled!
In other words, we are already 35% of the way to our goal, leaving $65,000 more to secure.
Can you see yourself playing one of the following roles?
- One benefactor provides $25,000. The target is reduced to $40,000
- 2 benefactors provide $10,000 each, leaving $20,000
- 2 contributions of $5000 each would reduce it to $10,000
- 4 gifts of $1000=$4000, leaving $6000
- 5 gifts of $500=$2500, leaving $3500
- 10 gifts of $100=$1000, leaving $2500
- 30 gifts of $50=1500, which leaves $1000
- 40 gifts of $25.00=1000!
A second goal is to reach 100,000 by June 1, 2026.
What makes this year such a valuable time to give?
First of all, the three commitments mentioned above. This isn’t just about producing conventional resources or professional development. It’s about investing in the Logos, promoting a transformation in curriculum resources, honoring teachers and home school parents, and rethinking the very form and structure of the school
It’s about turning us into a parable that bears witness to Christ the Logos and the riches of His incarnation, a candle put on a lamp stand.
And it’s time.
It’s time for a new model for the Christian classical curriculum.
We want to restore the principles and life of the Christian classical curriculum, adapting it to the needs and glorious opportunities of the present age.
This age denies or ignores the relationship between the souls of our students and the creation, not to mention God. It teaches children as though they live in a meaningless machine rather than a glory-filled creation. Too often and in too many ways, it disregards how children learn and what they can learn.
Their teaching leaves students restless and uninterested. It obscures the glory of what they are learning and hides the radiance of the glory of the creation – a glory they ought to be gratefully basking in.
They take a candle and put it under a bushel. The colossal expense in resources and human neglect is a mockery of God’s image.
We say, No! We say, this is wrong. We demand a curriculum that is humane, coherent, genuinely efficient, and effective: that is, Christian and classical.
That is why we have committed ourselves to developing soul-nourishing, Logos-glorifying, teacher-mentoring curricular materials.
Our curriculum resources restore the honor and place of the teacher. We don’t replace her with a textbook. Rather, we guide her into the glories of teaching.
Our resources direct teachers away from the mechanisms and techniques that frustrate them and their students to the soul-nourishing activities of mimetic teaching, poetic encounters, and personal participation in the realities they study.
And our resources take seriously the souls of your students, even in this post-human age.
And here’s some good news: After nearly 30 years of preparation, we completed the first of a planned four new resources in November. It will be available for purchase in February. God willing, the second one will too. Then we’ll produce two more by summer.
Get ready for the reveal!
(Two hints: 1. You have been asking for this for a long time, and 2. It’s pre-Lost Tools of Writing)
A New Model for Teacher Development.
For over twenty years we have been mentoring teachers in the Christian classical tradition by adapting it to the opportunities and great needs of the present. In our apprenticeship, we disciple teachers in mimetic and Socratic teaching, giving honor to the teacher, to the student, and to the Lord who is the true teacher and guide.
CiRCE graduates understand how to incarnate a logos, how to nourish the soul of the child on beautiful art, true stories, and good models. They learn to multiply the moments of illumination and the love of learning that flows from them. They become a parable to their students.
In fact, many of you are graduates or participants in the CiRCE apprenticeship, and yet I dare write these insane boasts – because they express what you have told us! You’ve told us about how it transformed you as a teacher, and also about the blessings it has brought to your family and even to your careers outside the school.
Graduate LaQueta Morgan put it this way:
“I came into the apprenticeship knowing that I was empty, and I left having feasted to fullness. I left ready to educate my children but also to offer more of myself and all that is beautiful to my family, my friends, my community; and most importantly to my savior who continues to call me and to redeem me and to prepare a table before me.”
It’s time to extend this model.
A New Model School.
And maybe above all, it’s time for a new approach to how we do school.
The glory of the age might be its wide-openness to trying new things. That’s good because while the conventional approaches to education have never worked, the evidence of the failure has driven multitudes to look for new options.
Over the past couple years, we have been quietly developing a new model for a school: one that applies Christian classical practices to the painful needs and unimagined opportunities of the moment.
We call it The Village School.
In brief, The Village School is an age-integrated, small, seven liberal arts, Logos-driven, community-weaving model of education. It consists of a coherent curriculum, where the seven liberating arts replace the random subjects of the conventional school and an apprenticeship-based pedagogy as cultivated in the CiRCE Apprenticeship.
The Village School is focused on community and place instead of creating conflict with parents and society. It is planted in the good local earth so that its branches can reach for the sky, instead of blowing in the wind like tumbleweed.
It is so simple that it offers cost-efficiencies and pedagogical effectiveness that have been regulated and analyzed out of the conventional school. And all it takes is a relentless belief that an education ordered to nourish souls is so much better than one ordered to social security or activism. It’s worth paying for, and it’s worth laboring for.
The idea of the Village School program was provoked by the obvious need for such a school. Initial funding has been provided by a few major donors. Presently, we are finalizing the “constitution” and working out many of the legal and administrative details. In addition, we are developing the resources that teachers will need for such a unique approach. We have encountered some delays over the past few years, but we plan to open a model Village School in the fall of 2027.
If you are interested in this concept, keep your eyes peeled for news over the next year. If you share the vision and want to support The Village School, the best way to do so right now may be to participate in this end-of-year and start-of-2026 drive. If you would like to learn about supporting The Village School program specifically, please write to me directly!
When you support the CiRCE Institute, you are supporting a new and illuminating model for curriculum, a new and transformative model for teacher development, and a new and Logos-governed model school.
If you are satisfied with the education status quo, these radical initiatives won’t hold your attention. If you are not, read on and see how you can be a part of this momentous work!
A Cheerful Giver.
Given that you are reading this letter, you know CiRCE is a not-for-profit. That is by design. We are pleased to remain conscious of our dependence on God and His people. While it isn’t without stress, being not-for-profit offers a unique joy that a for-profit business can never experience. In one word, that joy is “you.”
We know what Paul meant when he said, “God loves a cheerful giver”! Over and over, you have told us how pleased you are, even excited, to share in CiRCE’s ministries.
I can never express how much joy it gives me to hear you say so – how grateful I am to you for the gifts, yes – and, just as much, for the glad heart that gives them.
That is why I have been so open in this letter about our finances and the need for a balanced budget in 2026. We have reached an inflection point.
A Twofold Opportunity.
There is a second reason there may never be a more strategic opportunity to participate financially. This second reason is a twofold opportunity.
First, extraordinarily committed supporters have already pledged $35,000 in matching funds. This means that for every dollar you contribute, up to a total of $35,000, they will match it dollar for dollar. That doubles every gift you make.
Second, your gifts enable us to fulfill our commitment to developing curricular resources. Let me explain.
Curriculum materials are a double-blessing: the classical renewal gains access to new resources consistent with the CiRCE vision while CiRCE enters a virtuous financial cycle.
By investing heavily in curriculum resource development, we are investing in a revenue stream that will water everything else we do for as long as there is a CiRCE Institute. You’ll remember that our goal is to apply gifts to initiatives and research while sales and fees cover operational expenses.
We can do that only if we offer high-quality materials and services that generate that revenue. When you contribute now, you leverage your gift by accelerating the time it takes to reach that goal.
It is as though every dollar you give this year is matched by $2 or $5 or even $10 in the years to come.
In short, the long-term impact of your gifts may never be greater than now!
Here are four ways you can participate in the transformative work of the CiRCE Institute:
- Contribute a one-time, tax-deductible, matched Christmas gift of $50, $250, $1000 or the exact amount that fills you with joy. To do so, donate through the form at the top of the page or if you prefer, you can reduce the processing fees by mailing a check to 6125 Lumber Lane, Kannapolis, NC 28083.
- Spread your giving over the year by pledging a tax-deductible monthly contribution of $25, $100, $250 or the amount that most cheers you. To do so, donate through the form at the top of the page or if you prefer, you can reduce the processing fees by mailing a check to 6125 Lumber Lane, Kannapolis, NC 28083.
- Become a Benefactor of the CiRCE Institute by contributing $25,000 or more, in one payment or in multiple payments spread out over the year or, to help us meet projections, the first five months. To become a CiRCE Benefactor, please visit the website at www.circeinstitute.org/donate, mail a check to 6125 Lumber Lane, Kannapolis, NC 28083 or contact me directly by email at akern@circeinstitute.org.
- Provide a gift in kind, such as a stock donation in any amount. To take advantage of this opportunity, contact our Donor Relations Manager, Patty Bianco at patty@circeinstitute.org for assistance.
Where Specifically do Your Contributions Go?
Here are some examples of what you enable:
• $1861 provides a half scholarship for an apprentice for a single year
• $3722 provides a full scholarship for an apprentice for one year
• $3000 pays our monthly mortgage
• $36,000 covers an entire year’s mortgage
• $175,000 meets the budget requirements for The Village School in 2026.
• $35,000 enables much needed website updates
• $600 covers building maintenance
• $3000-5000 will enable a kitchen renovation to enable us to better care for guests
• $10-15,000 is the approximate cost of one month’s curriculum development when the whole writing team is involved
There’s a good deal more, but I trust that gives you a good taste of just how valuable your gifts are.
Our Commitment to You
Because we are sensitive to how much you sacrifice to support the ministries of the CiRCE Institute, we pledge ourselves to faithfully fulfill our shared commitments.
As I said earlier, this isn’t just about producing conventional resources or more of the same teacher training. This is about transformation,
It’s about discipling and teaching on the pattern of the eternal temple
It’s about supporting and multiplying the moments of illumination that nurture the love of learning
It’s about rethinking school in the light of Christ the Logos
It’s about making the truth visible through the works of our hands
It’s about bringing life and light to the receptive young heart.
It’s about incarnating ideas so we can be an illuminating parable.
It’s about bringing glory to Christ the Logos as the Logos who was made incarnate in the womb of the virgin Mary, who received Him willingly.
May we learn to be as willing as she was to have Him incarnated in us!
What a great time to participate in this soul-nourishing ministry!
May the Lord remember you in His kingdom.
Andrew